Basic Info

It all started with a 'hare-brained' (bad pun) idea of making a bit of pét-nat (pétillant naturel). Why pét-nat? Here's the story. Tim Wildman is a British-born Master of Wine (MW) is a British born MW who runs his own portfolio wine business involving travel, education and film. Tim became an MW in 2008 with a Dissertation on Australian wine, which is his professional speciality. He was awarded the Robert Mondavi Memorial prize for the highest score in Theory and his Dissertation achieved the highest pass mark in his year. One of his many interests/businesses is called the James Busby Travel Company, one that takes a B2B approach bringing business minded wine folks from around the globe down to 'really' experience Australia. His 'hype sessions' are near legendary bringing back changed buyers that officially becomes disciples not just for Tim, but for Australian wine. It was time spent on one of these trips that brought the idea of making wine, and more importantly pét-nat because he wanted to pick the grapes, make the wine and bottle the wine, all while on a month long trip down under. He also produced pét-nat because a number of producers that Tim holds in the highest regard were concerned about the growth of these new 'somm' driven wines with rented equipment, purchased grapes and made up labels. Tim loves 'free market enterprise' but respected these growers/producers with 100+ year business plans and didn't want to compete against them...hence pét-nat. Basically it looked like this: Fly to Australia, make a wine on a budget, with a deadline, get on a plane back to England - GO! 2014 was the inaugural vintage and he knew exactly what he wanted to start with, juicy grenache from Riverland. The vineyard contract, winemaking, bottle sourcing, etc. was the easy part. It was coming up with a name that was driving him mad! He went through countless names that all got his head to nod, then eventually shake.